Is Santa real? (ideas, teens, daughters, learning)

[ATX Wahine]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

I have always had very high moral standards.

I think you confuse 'very high moral standards' with 'smug superiority'. I have read a great number of your posts at this board and after sifting through paragraph after paragraph of your grandiose pontificating I've learned just one thing about you:

You love to talk about yourself! No subject is too far out of reach to turn into yet another opportunity to let us all know just how high those moral standards of yours are. Thread after thread, your methods are the same: enter, introduce, pontificate, derail, and judge.

It must be tiring to spend your days demonstrating to the audience of an internet forum how you subscribe to a moral code so high that even the angels above have nothing on you.

[stingraynm]

Originally Posted by maciesmom

However you handle it be sure to have a discussion with the child that includes being considerate of other kids who may not yet "know".....whether siblings or other kids at school.

Good thing to add. My parents kept me in fantasyland long enough to get ridiculed at school (faith was a big deal to me as a kid, no big deal now [related incidents? no.]). While my parents recognized their mistake when I came home with a wasting will, they also told me to laugh off the ridicule. After all, my parents noted that they may be silly to keep pushing the belief for so long, but those kids' parents were total d-bags to raise such a tactless child, something far more ridiculous - and prone to permanence - than a kid who believes in fairy tales. That was small comfort then, but I laugh my a** off now in retrospect. They were absolutely right.

That said, no matter what parents do, kids just like to ridicule one another. My parents made their share of mistakes, but a thick skin is one of the best gifts they ever gave me, and that may have found more growth in their mistakes than their wisdom.

[Mercury Cougar]

Originally Posted by formercalifornian

That is definitely an option if one is worried that a child will feel betrayed, but I don't believe that all children feel betrayed when presented with the truth. Honestly, mine weren't traumatized at all. They thought it was great when they were finally old enough to participate in the tradition by being Santa Claus for others.

Well, and that's the choice a parent has to make. Personally I didn't feel like telling my children it was anything other than a really cool fairy tale. I believe it sets a negative precedent once the child finds out the truth.

[ATX Wahine]

Originally Posted by Mercury Cougar

Personally I didn't feel like telling my children it was anything other than a really cool fairy tale.

This is how we approached the subject as well. My daughter learned the 'truth' of Santa when she was in Kindergarten. She wasn't upset nor did she feel betrayed; she seemed more amused than anything else. She asked about the man she saw in the mall, she wanted to know which one of us made the shoe prints with fireplace ashes going from the fireplace to the tree, etc. We 'fessed everything up and told her that Santa Claus is a fictional character who would continue to come 'visit' once a year as long as she wanted to 'believe' he was going to.

She's going to be 20 this December and she still gets a gift titled "From Santa" under the tree. We all like the tradition enough to continue with it. Even the family dog gets a gift from Santa.

[flik_becky]

That is exactly what the southern slave owners said about northern slave owners, that they thought they were superior to everyone else. Morals have nothing to do with superiority. I am very direct person and I am sorry if you confuse that having a smug attitude. I do not have to have some fear of posting somewhere because I am passionate about a subject. Many people are afraid to even let other family members know that they do not include santa in their holiday time with their kids because of the verbal abuse they would receive. In our family, I even have family who have tried to tell my kids to lie to their kids….telling me if my kids didn’t say that santa came to our house, they would say it was because my kids were bad! There is even a huge lack of tolerance in schools. They put on plays and refuse to even discuss when a child does not have santa come over because of fear it will make the mass of parents angry. How sad!

Many people believe, as stated more than once here, that if there is no santa there is no joy in Christmas or that someone those who chose a more enlightened holiday with their young children are somehow taking their children’s childhoods away.

I only remember two gifts that “santa” had given me, a glow worm and a hand sewn blanket I had seen my mother making. How did santa have an impact to my childhood if I can’t even remember any of it? There has to be a way of making memories with kids that last.

For example, in our search for non-santa Christmas stories, which actually occupy high percent of the books of all the children’s book space at the local library, we finally gave up and decided to start our own tradition of making our own stories. Last year I listened and asked exploring questions as my 4 and 6 year old told me a depicted a story as I wrote it down.
------
A little skinny tree stood in the forest next to his old strong grandfather, who had been hit by lightening in the past but you could see how strong he was because he was still growing in spite of it. The tree’s mother had been chosen by the woodworker to be turned into a beautiful bureau for a queen. He wanted to be made into something grand and conversed with his grandfather about when he would be big enough for such a noble job. He kept getting passed over. Finally one day, and still seemingly too small, he was cut and turned into a shepard’s staff which was a gift for the woodworker’s shepard brother. He was ashamed as he passed by his grandfather.

The story goes on about him disliking being a staff, yet he saved sheep and even helped hold the shepard during a bad storm so he could get home safely. He had some other adventures but never thought himself as worthy as his mother. The story ended with the brother returning to see the shepard with a piece of the little tree’s grandfather, fashioned into a hook to hold him in pride for the shepard. He heard all the great stories of his good deeds from his grandfather and was happy to make him proud.
------
Of course the above is summed up but not bad if you ask me for kids their age if you ask me. They STILL talk about that story and anticipate the next but can’t list a single thing they got for Christmas, though they still use and play with the things they got, I even just asked them to make sure.

There is NOTHING wrong with realizing the flaws in old ways and deciding that you will make better traditions, teach your children what they flaws are and why they are flawed so that they may help break the cycles that damage other people’s self image or make them dislike who they are.

[flik_becky]

　

I think you confuse 'very high moral standards' with 'smug superiority'. I have read a great number of your posts at this board and after sifting through paragraph after paragraph of your grandiose pontificating I've learned just one thing about you:

You love to talk about yourself! No subject is too far out of reach to turn into yet another opportunity to let us all know just how high those moral standards of yours are. Thread after thread, your methods are the same: enter, introduce, pontificate, derail, and judge.

It must be tiring to spend your days demonstrating to the audience of an internet forum how you subscribe to a moral code so high that even the angels above have nothing on you.

Mostly I talk about my children and do my best to provide them with as much as possible in the way of real knowledge. If you knew me better, you‘d better understand my need for seeking substantial traditions and real heritage. You‘d have more compassion. I know it may be unpopular to go against the norms of society but that does not mean that I am wrong that elves are insensitive depictions of people with medical conditions that most here are so very fortunate that our children were not born with. How do you know that right now one of my very own children doesn’t have dwarfism and that they are constantly being bullied and that everyone calls them santa’s little helpers? Can you even think for one moment how painful this time of year must be for mothers of children with dwarfism, let alone the children!…They spend the entire year trying to build their child’s self confidence with who they are and help those around them realize that their little one has feelings too but doing their best to dispel stereotypes only to have two months in the entire year destroy all that hard work? How about the group that started up in the Netherlands way back in 1995 to try and abolish Black Pete? Did you know that the stereotypes have been part of the reason they have such a high unemployment rate? That people really and truly believe they are the devil? Sometimes you just have to stand up for what is right regardless of what the mass of society follows.

As for holidays, we are pretty strong about making sure kids know why they celebrate things, not just to get presents and mindlessly follow what society does without reason. Kids these days do not know why they put stockings up, put a tree up, ect. We are going so far next year for Thanksgiving to serve pheasant and venison among other foods we grow in our garden that were truly from that time period, celebrating the harvest, not a bunch of white guys who thought they did not need to worry about food cause they could trade for all the food they needed.

[flik_becky]

We do not need santa to make our kids happy or to have a joyous Christmas.

Here is how we’ve changed the traditions around a bit.
1. Instead of milk and cookies for santa, the kids wake up to huge gingerbread men, all decked out with little candies and icing, you know, because it should be for the kids. The first time I did that the kids eyes were HUGE.
2. Instead of santa giving to everyone equally to all kids, providing unnecessary wants, the kids give necessity items to the food shelf, donate to the salvation army, and donate their old coats to for the coats for kids drive. They donate their old clothes as well. No kids toy drives.
3. They get to pick and choose the greenery coming into our home on the solstice. The tree does not go up so we can put gifts under it, it goes up so that we can celebrate the shortest day of the year, the green representing life and the return of spring. We do not “celebrate” it rather than just teach it and have a good time learning about real traditions.
3. Outside, we decorate the three small pines in our front yard with traditional decorations, (foods birds like) to give back to nature what she gave to us
4. Not only do we cover the whole..the north star was about guiding people, we also cover the world tree, that it was said it was so tall that it touched the north star.
5. We don’t buy and give the little chocolate and other candy treats, they make their own and now insist on doing it every year.

Of course, when it comes to the traditions of the magic mushrooms, we have no room for going out and excitingly collecting red and white mushrooms that make us trip, but we talk about the importance they had in the evolution of the traditions and why they were so important then. We do not teach it as bad or good, we make sure our children see them for what they wre back then. In fact, they were said to grow under the world tree and the ever sacred reindeer seek them out and eat them as well....and that it is probably where the flying reindeer came from. Interesting and true.

Even everyone freaking out about 'X'mas being replaced by Christmas, as it has to do with ancient lettering and language was and is as acceptable as it was back then.

I forgot a bit I had read to the kids last year. I stated somewhere in here that st nick was not a st until after his death. Well duh but I was way off as to his real insignificance to Christian views.

Most religious historians agree that St Nicholas did not actually exist as a real person, and was instead a Christianized version of earlier Pagan gods. Nicholas' legends were mainly created out of stories about the Teutonic god called Hold Nickar, known as Poseidon to the Greeks. This powerful sea god was known to gallop through the sky during the winter solstice, granting boons to his worshippers below. When the Catholic Church created the character of St Nicholas, they took his name from "Nickar" and gave him Poseidon's title of "the Sailor."

And put more diplomatically than I:

http://erocx1.blogspot.com/2008/12/shamanic-origins-of-christmas.htmlSome (broken link) psychologists have discussed the "cognitive dissonance" which occurs when children are encouraged to believe in the literal existence of Santa Claus, only to have their parents' lie revealed when they are older. By so deceiving our children we rob them of a richer heritage, for the actual origin of these ancient rituals is rooted deep in our history and our collective unconscious. By better understanding the truths within these popular celebrations, we can better understand the modern world, and our place in it.

Tough I do not agree with the last comment about sharing mushrooms with your relatives, and not because we don't want to share either, which is obviously a joke but I felt I needed to say it anyway.

Another interesting bit:

Christmas is as good a time as any to acknowledge the contributions of indigenous peoples around the planet to the formation of global knowledge, culture and innovations since the “age of discovery”. So much of the technology, food, textiles, traditions and even mathematics that formed the basis for modern western civilisation was borrowed, or synthesised, or developed in conjunction with native peoples http://european-indigenous-peoples.suite101.com/article.cfm/indigenous_christmas_origins#ixzz0X5miUUVi (http://european-indigenous-peoples.suite101.com/article.cfm/indigenous_christmas_origins%20/%20ixzz0X5miUUVi - broken link)

We are thinking about publishing some children's books about the real traditions and giving them to all the kids in the family, especially those who have been verbal about about taking our childrens' childhoods away.

[dvcgal]

Originally Posted by mjmama

With a school aged child approaching the age where we get the Santa question, I'm wondering how others have handled it. I'd like to be prepared when it happens...hopefully we have another year or two before it does.

You have to believe in order to receive! That's our motto!

[formercalifornian]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

That is exactly what the southern slave owners said about northern slave owners, that they thought they were superior to everyone else. Morals have nothing to do with superiority. I am very direct person and I am sorry if you confuse that having a smug attitude. I do not have to have some fear of posting somewhere because I am passionate about a subject. Many people are afraid to even let other family members know that they do not include santa in their holiday time with their kids because of the verbal abuse they would receive. In our family, I even have family who have tried to tell my kids to lie to their kids….telling me if my kids didn’t say that santa came to our house, they would say it was because my kids were bad! There is even a huge lack of tolerance in schools. They put on plays and refuse to even discuss when a child does not have santa come over because of fear it will make the mass of parents angry. How sad!

Many people believe, as stated more than once here, that if there is no santa there is no joy in Christmas or that someone those who chose a more enlightened holiday with their young children are somehow taking their children’s childhoods away.

I only remember two gifts that “santa” had given me, a glow worm and a hand sewn blanket I had seen my mother making. How did santa have an impact to my childhood if I can’t even remember any of it? There has to be a way of making memories with kids that last.

For example, in our search for non-santa Christmas stories, which actually occupy high percent of the books of all the children’s book space at the local library, we finally gave up and decided to start our own tradition of making our own stories. Last year I listened and asked exploring questions as my 4 and 6 year old told me a depicted a story as I wrote it down.
------
A little skinny tree stood in the forest next to his old strong grandfather, who had been hit by lightening in the past but you could see how strong he was because he was still growing in spite of it. The tree’s mother had been chosen by the woodworker to be turned into a beautiful bureau for a queen. He wanted to be made into something grand and conversed with his grandfather about when he would be big enough for such a noble job. He kept getting passed over. Finally one day, and still seemingly too small, he was cut and turned into a shepard’s staff which was a gift for the woodworker’s shepard brother. He was ashamed as he passed by his grandfather.

The story goes on about him disliking being a staff, yet he saved sheep and even helped hold the shepard during a bad storm so he could get home safely. He had some other adventures but never thought himself as worthy as his mother. The story ended with the brother returning to see the shepard with a piece of the little tree’s grandfather, fashioned into a hook to hold him in pride for the shepard. He heard all the great stories of his good deeds from his grandfather and was happy to make him proud.
------
Of course the above is summed up but not bad if you ask me for kids their age if you ask me. They STILL talk about that story and anticipate the next but can’t list a single thing they got for Christmas, though they still use and play with the things they got, I even just asked them to make sure.

There is NOTHING wrong with realizing the flaws in old ways and deciding that you will make better traditions, teach your children what they flaws are and why they are flawed so that they may help break the cycles that damage other people’s self image or make them dislike who they are.

Oh, for pity's sake! One post wasn't enough for you? I don't have the energy for this ridiculous conversation anymore. Congratulations, Becky, you win. "Enter, introduce, pontificate, derail, and judge." Indeed!

[ATX Wahine]

Slaves, dwarfism, and magic mushrooms. Oh my. Who knew that Christmas was so perverse? All that's missing now is Sasquatch.

Oops - my bad for showing such insensitivity toward any hairy woodland creatures out there who might be reading this on their laptop.